Sonja believes that everyone has the essential ingredients for personal transformation. Although, everyone must contend with the burdens of past negative experiences, she views her clients through the perspective of possibility and their greatest human potential. Sonja’s personal style with her clients is rooted in authenticity and immediacy, using interactions in the present moment as a looking glass into the nature of self. She also works to dismantle power dynamics that can be found in traditional therapist-client relationships. 

With a lifetime of meaningful personal experience and over 20 years of diverse professional experience, Sonja offers a unique, pluralistic viewpoint and meaningful strategies, giving clients the opportunity to explore anew aspects of themselves, their relationships, their careers, and the meaning of living. Her unique multicultural background taught her to negotiate the disparate needs and expectations of multiple cultural realms; a growing commonplace for many individuals. Her personal and professional experience with multicultural couples and blended families also serves as a resource for parents and adult children who seek to improve family dynamics, improve intimate relationships, or seek to resolve wounding from earlier experiences.

Sonja uses a holistic lens. She believes that client problems are not problems with the self, but a result of the circumstances that surround them. Sonja educates her clients about systemic impacts (cultural, social, environmental, political) on relationships, human development and personal well-being. She investigates how physical health impacts mental health and makes health recommendations for improving overall well-being. Her overall goal is to support clients in grounding into their essential selves in a world with overwhelming problems. Sonja applies these same principles in couples work as well. She sees relational experiences as a stage for how we relate to the self and the rest of the world.  

Sonja is a person-centered, trauma-informed, somatic-focused practitioner whose approach to therapy is both practical and deepening. While adept at solution-oriented approaches, she also integrates mind/body strategies, neurobiology, a psychodynamic lens, intersectionality, Gestalt, and post-modern perspectives into her work with clients. In simple terms, every part of the arc in the human experience matters; understanding past experiences, bringing the unconscious to the conscious, understanding internal and external influences on well-being and development, anchoring to the present moment, and strategizing for short- and long-term future possibilities. Her flexibility, creativity, and grounded nature give ease to working with many different kinds of peoples.

Although Sonja has experience working with various populations, her passion is found in working with individuals and couples who struggle with negotiating the multiple intersections of their lives. This arguably includes any person because people are unique and complex, occupying many roles and identities. Sonja believes that it is within the intersections of our lives where we discover who we are, what we are made of, and find the courage to become exactly who we want to be.